Competition in the lungs

Particulate matter overrides the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide. This can lead to adverse health effects from oxidative stress.

25-Nov-2021 - According to epidemiological studies, air pollution remains one of the greatest health risks worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has therefore recently tightened their recommendations for acceptable air pollution. The chemical processes underlying the adverse health effects of air ...

Researchers find vital enzyme holds key to the fight against cancer and viral infections

Understanding how to control the enzyme may lead to new treatments

19-Aug-2021 - A new study led by University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers identifies two ways in which APOBEC3A— a vital enzyme that is responsible for genetic changes resulting in a variety of cancers while protecting our cells against viral infection—is controlled. The enzyme APOBEC3A is a vital ...

Link between brain immune cells and Alzheimer's disease development identified

Absence of microglia prevents plaque formation

22-Aug-2019 - Scientists from the University of California, Irvine School of Biological Sciences have discovered how to forestall Alzheimer's disease in a laboratory setting, a finding that could one day help in devising targeted drugs that prevent it. The researchers found that by removing brain immune cells ...

Combat the deadly gastrointestinal infection C. diff

16-May-2018 - Researchers from the University of California, Irvine and Harvard University have discovered how the Clostridium difficile toxin B (TcdB) recognizes the human Frizzled protein, the receptor it uses to invade intestinal cells and lead to deadly gastrointestinal infections. The findings could pave ...

Organs-on-chips for large-scale drug screening

09-Feb-2017 - Led by UCI professor of molecular biology & biochemistry Christopher C.W. Hughes, the research team successfully established multiple vascularized micro-organs on an industry-standard 96-well plate. Hughes and the study's first author, Duc T. T. Phan, showed that these miniature tissues are much ...

Botox's sweet tooth underlies its key neuron-targeting mechanism

16-Jun-2016 - The Botox toxin has a sweet tooth, and it's this craving for sugars - glycans, to be exact - that underlies its extreme ability target neuron cells in the body ... while giving researchers an approach to neutralize it. A study co-led by Rongsheng Jin, professor of physiology & biophysics at the ...

French drug trial details murky, should not influence future cannabinoid research

22-Jan-2016 - Contrary to initial reports, the drug tested on paid volunteers in a French study, which resulted in one death and five hospitalizations, did not contain cannabis or cannabinoids. The drug, an FAAH inhibitor manufactured by the Portuguese company Bial, was instead designed to act upon the human ...

New class of inhibitory compounds developed to aid melanoma treatments

04-Dec-2015 - A University of California, Irvine pharmacology researcher has helped create a class of inhibitory compounds that can strongly enhance the effect of anti-tumor drugs for melanoma. In doing so, Daniele Piomelli, the Louise Turner Arnold Chair in the Neurosciences at UCI, and scientists at the ...

One-step test for hepatitis C virus infection developed

17-Nov-2015 - UC Irvine Health researchers have developed a cost-effective one-step test that screens, detects and confirms hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections. Current blood-based HCV testing requires two steps and can be expensive, inconvenient and is not widely available or affordable globally. "Our novel ...

Human neural stem cells restore cognitive functions impaired by chemotherapy

UCI study reveals how they alleviate 'chemobrain' after cancer treatments

19-Feb-2015 - Human neural stem cell treatments are showing promise for reversing learning and memory deficits after chemotherapy, according to UC Irvine researchers. In preclinical studies using rodents, they found that stem cells transplanted one week after the completion of a series of chemotherapy sessions ...